


Not Normal

by LaurelCrowned



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Blood, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:28:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26584399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaurelCrowned/pseuds/LaurelCrowned
Summary: It was a simple job. Steal the jewels and run. So why is Iskander hiding in the park while things explode?





	Not Normal

**Author's Note:**

> A one-shot featuring one of my original characters. Vaguely movie-verse, but only vaguely. Lots of swearing, and injuries.

He ran down the slick sidewalks wet with rain, the shitty tread on his shitty bargain-bin tennis shoes threatening to send him skidding to the ground at any second. The sirens were growing louder behind him. He'd lost Angie somewhere back at Fourth Street when she'd faded into the shadows, and Basil was God only knew where. Probably long safe. The little shit always cut and ran. And yet they would give Basil point on big jobs, and only trust _him_ with lookout duty. What a fucking joke! He'd had a bad feeling about tonight, he brooded as he ran. Nobody'd believed him, because nobody ever believed him.  
  
Iskander turned a corner too sharply and scrambled over a fence, then leaped down into the wet grass of one of the city parks. It was dark and after hours. The gates were locked, and cop cars had to contend with the lanes of thick, slow Friday night traffic. He liked his chances better in here than out there. The park was huge, a common gathering place for the homeless teenagers like him, and he knew every hiding place in it.   
  
His backpack meowed unhappily at him, but he couldn't stop to reach back and steady it. He had to settle for a soft _pspsps_ and silent promise that as soon as he'd pawned some of the jewels in his pockets, he'd buy the best damn cat food they made. The real expensive shit that the rich people fed their cats. Sure, most of the goods were going straight to the boss, and then they'd vanish to his boss and his boss and his boss, some kind of weird chain of command that Iskan was at the absolute bargain-bin bottom of. And probably always would be, because of the stupid-stupid- _stupid_ way he'd been born. Fucking hell. It drove him nuts, never knowing what was really going on. What was so special about that one jewelry store, anyway? There were hundreds, maybe thousands, but they had to pick _this one_.  
  
So, yeah. He was going to take his own cut. Screw those guys, anyway.  
  
He slowed, finally, to catch his breath once he crossed the old red cobblestone bridge over the duck pond where he and Bayard fished sometimes. It was sheltered by a round of weeping willow trees – sorrow trees, his grandmother called them. She'd been able to talk to plants, and she knew things about them. Maybe if he'd been able to talk to plants, he'd be useful. He could have fought those cops. Used vines to tangle the wheels of their cars, or - or released swarms of deadly Japanese giant hornets! Wait, no, hornets probably didn't count as plants. But it would be better than standing around, doing nothing but holding a gun that looked and felt more fake and black-plasticky than the toy squirt guns he'd played with as a kid. It made his hands itch just to hold it, and his skin crawled where it pressed into his stomach inside his belt.  
  
He crouched down next to one of the boles and swung his backpack around, unzipped it a little to check on Bay. The enormous, fluffy red-and-white head popped out with a sour look of fire-golden eyes. He scritched under the so-soft chin, combing the long fur with his fingers, as he caught his breath. The sirens had continued on past the park, screaming into the distance. He was safe. He patted his pockets again; the gems made a funny little noise, including something that didn't sound like a gem. Iskan frowned and reached inside his threadbare coat, and pulled the thing out. He turned it over in his long fingers, frowning. _What the hell?_  
  
It was some kind of data card, he could tell, but not like any sort of tech they'd had in his crowded public schools. It looked expensive, and not standard. Not the kind of thing you could just plug into any old iPhone and use. He had no idea where it came from, until he suddenly remembered - _"Run. Meet back at base!" Angie had shouted at him, and shoved him, her hands pushing at his sides._ Had she slipped it into his pocket?  
  
An explosion lit the night, bright enough to make him cringe away. He shielded Bayard with his body in the split-second before the wave of the blast hit hard enough to rattle the ground, ripple the fish pond, and make the protective screen of willow-branches sway side to side. In the moment after, he could hear shouts and screams, and sounds of heavy footsteps running. Car alarms were going off in the distance. He shoved Bay's head down and thrust the data card in with the cat. He zipped the backpack up and crouched low, blinking to clear his vision. No sooner had he done that, than another explosion and a tremendous crash came from the opposite end of the park. There was a woman's cry of pain, a man shouting a name, and then more crashing.   
  
He listened hard, fearing to hear Angie or Basil or Jimmy, but none of the voices were ones he knew - no, wait, was that...? It sounded like one of Basil's contacts he'd met once, the old, scary ones who dealt with the boss of the boss of the boss, way too important to bother with a stupid jewelry store robbery. They were the ones who handled the heavy shit, and who could maybe get in you in good with the right people, powerful people, but could also get you killed if they didn't like how you looked at them. What in the _fuck_?  
  
There was gunfire, and even he could tell it was a fight, a bad fight. He fingered the gun. It wasn't, maybe, his fight. He was supposed to go back to base, the abandoned house with the foreclosure sign on the door a few miles away in the slightly less shitty part of town. This wasn't _his_ mess to deal with. But he hated being left out.   
  
Then he heard the groaning. Soft noises of pain. He froze, his hands on the gun. _Fuck._ Nobody was supposed to get hurt tonight. This wasn't his mess. He shouldn't get involved. He should go skim his jewels off the take and then go and shove the data card up Angie's nose, and get a damn milkshake and maybe some new shoes.   
  
He didn't do that. The noise came again, and cursing himself for a moron, Iskander shouldered his backpack and eased a glance through the willow branches. The far end of the park looked like a war zone. The gate had been torn down by the car that had driven - no, the car that had been _thrown_ into it. Wow. But there wasn't any noise or movement from the car, and in the strange way he always knew, Iskan knew there wasn't anyone there still alive.  
  
The woman on the ground, though...  
  
Wow, she was beautiful. And she was hurt bad. And she was wearing that weird-ass uniform that meant _fucking run, do not pass go, run like hell and don't stop running_. She was holding her hands against her thigh, and even in the low light he had no trouble sensing what was wrong with her leg. And her abdomen. Internal bleeding. External bleeding. Just, a shit-ton of bleeding. His shoulders shook against his will, senses screaming at him to _fucking do something_.   
  
He had Bay to think of, and his jewels, and Angie and Basil and and –  
  
"Kid, get out of here."   
  
He gaped. Her voice was raspy with pain. She couldn't quite sit up to look at him, and it was dark, and how did she know he was even there?  
  
A quiet hiss, and she continued. She sounded...tired, mostly, not angry. "I know you have a gun, and I know you don't want to use it on me. You seem like a nice kid."  
  
He didn't respond, didn't know how to respond. But he slowly, slowly crept out, until his nerves were humming with tension. He walked closer until he could see her eyes. Could see the tension and the pain and the weariness. It wasn't a mystery what she'd see looking at him in return: skinny, tall and lanky, worn clothes, passing for nineteen if he was lucky and sixteen if he wasn't. She was red-haired and looked old enough to maybe not-quite be his mom, if his mom weren't dead.   
  
The injured woman made a gurgling sound almost like a laugh. "Oh, they get younger every year. Listen. I don't want to hurt you. You need to get out of here before the boss of your boss of your boss comes back for me, and I don't have any choice left but to hurt all of you." She wheezed, hands trying and failing to stem the bleeding from her leg. She was bluffing; she couldn't even stand up.  
  
Wait, how had she known- Oh. Oh, fuck.  
  
The woman sighed. "Yes, I'm a mutant. Yes, I can read your mind. Yes, I know you're thinking of helping me, but I'd really rather you didn't get yourself killed. Just go already. I've lived through worse than this."  
  
But he didn't go, because God dammit, he was tired of being bossed around by everyone, and his hands were tingling, and this lady was hurt and - well, he'd had enough of all this crazy mess. Next thing he knew he was kneeling by her and reaching to put his hands over her abdomen. That was the worst of it. He was so jacked on adrenaline, he didn't have to pull hard to find the strength to send waves of cool white-blue energy into her. He could see her aura, glowing with fire-red and orange embers, and if she weren't so badly injured it would probably be overwhelmingly strong. Shit. Of all the people to decide to help, he'd picked one of the big guns. He could never, ever, ever tell anyone about this.  
  
She batted at his hands and tried to pull away at first. But as the energy flowed into her, easing the pain, stopping the bleeding, knitting bone and flesh and organs (God, how was she even still alive?), she stopped and looked at him. Really looked, like nobody ever looked at him.  
  
"You're a healer." The woman sounded surprised. He grit his teeth, face flushed with embarrassment, and focused solely on what he was doing.  
  
"I know, it's _stupid_ ," he muttered, because it _was_ , God, he would have given anything to be like Angie who could walk through shadows, or Basil who could throw fucking _lightning_ around. Or even her, the scary-strong lady who could read minds. He couldn't ever be normal, but he wasn't even a very good mutant. He could kind of understand why he only ever got dumbass assignments. What good was he in a fight? He was practically allergic to guns, and trying to land a punch was like trying to move through molasses. He didn't really understand, but it was somehow because of the stupid healing. What a worthless thing to have.  
  
The woman paused a long moment before answering, as if she were listening to every word he said to himself. "It's not stupid at all. It's not all that common, and you're actually a lot more powerful than you think. Iskander."  
  
He shivered at the sound of his name, not quite looking at her. She made him feel weird, all unsteady inside. But it was kind of nice, too. Nobody ever looked at him like that. 

"Do you just go around telling people their names to get them to be scared of you, or something?" he scoffed, feeling his ears burning.   
  
Her hand closed lightly on his wrist where he pressed against her abdomen. "You don't have to stay here, you know. Come with me. I can take you somewhere you can properly learn to use your powers. Where you don't have to rob jewelry stores just to eat."  
  
He shook his head warily. "No, thanks. I've heard promises like that before." They never ended in anything good. And he had Bay to take care of. He had responsibilities.  
  
It only took a few more minutes before the wounds were closed, and he let the energy fade away. He stood and offered her a hand up, which she took carefully, testing her weight on the injured leg. She looked impressed. Duh, of course it didn't hurt; he'd fixed it. He rolled his eyes. Adults were all the same, whether they were mutants or not.  
  
"Thank you, Iskander. You likely saved my life." She looked a bit sad when she smiled, but he was too slow to realize that was bad. No, he didn't realize the problem until she said,  
  
"And that's why I'm very sorry about this."   
  
Something from behind hit him hard over the head, and suddenly he was crumpled in her arms. He was taller than she was, but she felt incredibly strong for her size. He faintly heard her scolding someone, "That _really_ wasn't necessary, Logan. I already had him. Be careful with his pack, he has a pet cat in there along with the data card we're looking for."  
  
Fuck. Right. Mind-reader.   
  
That was the last thing he remembered before someone lifted him up, and it all went dark.


End file.
